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Posts Tagged ‘animal intelligence’

Hard on the heels of the research that dogs have evolved to look up to us with longing eyes to get … well, pretty much whatever it is they want, in our household at least … there is now a fascinating set of research findings that suggest dogs can discern when humans aren’t nice people.

Long suspected, it now appears to have been proven, as you can read below.

We have long suspected this to be the case. When about ten years old, we were walking our Norfolk Terrier – Tim, after Dickens’s Tiny Tim – down the hill to Langland Beach in Mumbles, at the bottom of which was a large art deco public toilet block.

A man – nondescript, forties, seemingly harmless – struck up a conversation on the way down the hill, noting how nice the dog was.

Except he wasn’t. Nice. He snarled, and bared his teeth, and ran in circles on the end of his lead, and wouldn’t let the man near him to pat him or any such activity. He snarled and barked all down the hill.

As his owner, and a polite little boy, I was shocked, and apologetic. It was totally out of character for the dog.

At the bottom of the hill, the guy asked if I wanted to come into the toilets with him, as I probably needed to go to the toilet, right?

Oh no I didn’t. My child safety training had been excellent. As he went in, I hightailed it back up the hill dragging the poor bloody dog behind me, to collapse in tears at my mother’s feet.

Looking back, I saw the man come out of the toilet again, and cast around looking for me.

Fuck him. And thank you to the dog. He knew.

PS Did we mention we had a bird who used to walk to the front door when I was still a mile away in the car?

Like this:

A grieving dolphin has been spotted carrying its dead calf off the New Zealand coastline.

The bottlenose dolphin was seen at the Bay of Islands on the east coast on Tuesday and was pictured carrying her dead calf alongside another dolphin.

The Department of Conservation warned residents to give the dolphin “space and time” to grieve the death of her young, suspecting it to be stillborn.

Source: Department of ConservationThe department’s Dr Catherine Peters said people should avoid dolphins in the area during this period.

“This female needs everyone on the water to give her the extra space and respect she needs whilst she copes with her loss,” she said.

The mother has dropped the calf “frequently” while swimming with a group which has separated from her at times, leaving the mammal vulnerable.

Pictures of the grieving mother were shared by the department on Twitter with many left heartbroken.

In July last year, a grieving mother killer whale was spotted pushing her dead calf around waters in Canada for a week.

Scientists were concerned the whale was starving herself. After travelling 1600 kilometres in 17 days she finally let the calf go.

Meanwhile dogs are considered as intelligent as the average two-year-old child, according to research by animal psychologists.

Researchers have found that dogs are capable of understanding up to 250 words and gestures, can count up to five and can perform simple mathematical calculations.

According to research, cows are also generally quite intelligent animals who can remember things for a long time.

Animal behaviorists have found that they interact in socially complex ways, developing friendships over time and sometimes holding grudges against other cows who treat them badly.

And new research even reveals that sheep are far more intelligent than they have been given credit for. Scientists at the University of Cambridge have found that the creatures have the brainpower to equal rodents, monkeys and, in some tests, even humans.

At the Wellthisiswhatithink household we used to have a lorikeet who roamed the home, and would walk up to the front door when the family car was about a kilometre away, and wait for it to arrive in the driveway. How did it know?

You tell us.

But we think we need to think much harder about how we interact with animals, that’s for sure.